We're All Mad Here
by Noname215
Summary: Inner monologues of the most notorious residents of Arkham Asylum. The Joker in this is before his face was cut off.
1. Chapter 1: The Joker

The scars that I wear have always been much more than just scars. They take root in my very soul, tainting me until the day I die. If I don't take my own life eventually, as I know I just might one day. You see, I am horrifically insane, my psyche being like an image in a shattered mirror. I wasn't always this way, no. Crazy people usually need to have had their breaking point. And my breaking point was a man.

The man wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. I tried to tell him that I was simply the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. I even tried to show him my face. But, it was at that point that I fell. Into what, I still don't know. I remember my body burning all over, like cigar lighters being held up to my skin. My eyes stung, and I could taste something like salt on my lips. I woke up in a puddle, the hood I was forced to where on my head now gone and my entire body shivering. I looked down into that puddle for some water to my eyes. I then saw what I had become. It is what I am forced to look at in the mirror every day, what makes me famous aside from what it is I have done. My lips were as red as blood, my hair a pale green, my eyes yellowed and their vessels cracked. But it was my skin that scared me the most: the pale whiteness like of a dead person. I died that night, and a monster was born.

Am I a monster? Of course I am. I must be, otherwise I wouldn't be here. To my right, is a former district attorney, strikingly handsome and know for being incorruptible. Now, he wears his new face like a trophy; an ugly, red and black distortion of flesh like he had gone to Hell and came back with only half of his skin. He's now one of the most evil men in this town. To my left, is a famous scientist whose whole life was shattered when his wife became host of a deadly virus. He threw his whole life away to save her, but instead he decided that his wife was worth more than the lives of other human beings. Across from me is another scientist, a college professor who studied the concept of fear, and out of pure obsession, sought to subject it upon others. This was a man who drove another to put a bullet in his head simply by talking to him. The list is endless: a crocodile man, a billionaire with a curious appearance like that of a waddling bird, a woman who uses sexual charisma to seduce to men into doing her bidding, a former actor who takes on a new appearance every day, and even a man whose killed so many people the tally marks on his body cover up every inch. It goes on and on. But, for some reason, they fear me the most. Perhaps it's my smile, smile not unlike Satan's, as one might say.

But there are other monsters in this city. Not just the ones that reside in here, no. The real monster is the one who put me here countless times. The one that evil feeds off of, is drawn to, and ultimately suffers defeat at the hands of. Like the others here in the madhouse, he has a passion for the theatrical. Every tool in his kit, every vehicle at his disposal is of the same design, and he uses them to strike fear into the hearts of men. He never stopped scaring me, even though I never show it. But as I sit here in my padded room, with my straightjacket and my knife hidden in the folds, I learn that this is the only man I fear.

I fear he will abandon me like everyone else did. I fear he will stop caring about me, about my work. And I know that every time I kill someone or blow something up, he will be there. But the day he isn't? I wish never to think of it. It will be the day I finally destroy this city, and I know he would never allow it. He must always make time for little ol' me. Oh, we do have so much fun together, him and I. Everything I do, I do for him. I just want him to really look me in the eyes, and listen to what I have to say. I want him to say he's sorry for letting be become this monster. Then I want him to kill me. That would be the ultimate victory against him. I would finally have peace, and he would know that he had to put me down like the sick dog I am.

And it's almost time to get back to work.

I think I'm going to sleep a little while, and dream about strangling a kitten to death on national TV. Then I'm going to slip the knife out of the straight jacket, and call for a medic.

And then I will cut his throat.


	2. Chapter 2: The Penguin

I am not a madman. I am an aristocrat, and have been all my life. I am only in this so called "rehabilitation facility" for one reason. And that is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to the more than unreliable media, that is usually the position I find myself in. But why am I here, in this asylum? Well, let's just say a business proposition didn't work as well as it should of. As a matter of fact, it tore apart. Literally. But I am not insane, as others have said to me. You need to let on as being such in the business I run. My appearance helps towards that. I will admit, I am not a handsome man, nor am I as tall as the others. But I most certainly have what other would-be "criminals" don't have. And that is class.

I was born in an upper class family, one of the most famous and well-respected in Gotham City: The Cobblepots. My bloodline has prospered since the time of President Lincoln, and has come close to proving itself to being larger than all the others. My great-grandfather Henry worked with Cyrus Pinkney to build this great city, and although he died suddenly and, may I add, quite violently, his legacy lives on through me. I owe it to him to be as great as he, to be as respected as he. But am I? No. I am treated as if I am some common criminal, who should be locked up in Blackgate Prison or Arkham Asylum. And, unfortunately, the latter today where I find myself.

There was no trial to be had, no tears to be said for poor Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. All I get for everything I've done for this city is a broken rib from a man who suffers dementia beyond belief, and half of a decade undertaking psychiatric therapy from a young harlot who seems fixated on that harlequin down the hall. I do not blame anyone but myself. I allowed myself to become incarcerated here when I could have used my name and means to buy my freedom and build something great. I ALLOWED MYSELF TO BE CORNERED BY A RODENT WHEN I COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING FOR MY CITY.

But there is always time to fix our mistakes. I know that my time here shall not be as long as it has been determined. I will prove myself to be better than the rest, to be a civilized gentleman and not a maniac like the man across from me, the one who wears the enormous hat and constantly quotes Carroll verbatim. And I will walk upstairs, past the gates, and smell the fresh air. A limousine will no doubt be waiting for me when I finally am free of this madhouse.

God help the man who put me in here, for that person will certainly need it.


	3. Chapter 3: The Mad Hatter

I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle. Who I am is most certainly the eternal question, the one that very few have been able to solve with even the slightest hope of being correct. The individual is a vast and terrible mystery without a solution, an enigma without a resolution. Which reminds me, why is a raven like a writing desk? Answer: I have absolutely no idea. And that is the main theme in the story that is my miserable and lonely life. The life before I was introduced to the love of my life: Alice. Oh, my dear, dear Alice, the lovely girl is late agin for her tea. Well, no matter. Even the White Rabbit was likely to have been a few seconds. But not that it would have mattered. Punctuality is a virtue he did not possess, and it seems that neither does dear Alice. I shall have to correct her later.

Do I ever consider questioning the madness? Not at all, for madness is a cyclone that sucks you into a void and refuses to release you. You may say that, like my hat, it is like a honorary badge, for being mad is what made me the great man I am today. I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then: a scab upon the face that was the world. Nobody loved me, nor would anyone pay attention to what I had to say. Nobody cared for the lonely wretch named Jervis Tetch. That was before poor and lost Alice came to my tea party. She was a sweet girl, who was as mad as I, even if she didn't know it. And then I learned that she loved another, a man whose grotesque and conceited smile was much like a familiar cat.

Oh, where is the woman who brings me my afternoon tea?

Why did I batter the poor man to death, I often ask myself. However, I'm afraid I can't explain myself. Because I am not myself, you see. I am a young soul in the body of a raving lunatic, a murderer, a schizophrenic sociopath that has no regard for the life of another human being. And why did she run? Did she fear me? Or did she take the advice of the Dodo, that here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that. It didn't matter to me. Nothing would have kept me from bringing Alice to the tea party. Here comes the woman with my tea. Oh, I do hope she doesn't really know how naughty Jervis has been. How I was able to gently remove the fire axe from the fire escape before and disappear down a rabbit hole back into my room. My sanctuary. My Wonderland. And I will let nobody take it from me. I will let no one take my Alice away from me.

Off with her head.


	4. Chapter 4: The Scarerow

"I am not afraid of anything."

I've heard this saying a thousand times before. It has always, in every circumstance, proved false. I am a scientist, and therefore I am always open to debate, but I know that no one can truly fear "nothing." That is, unless, what you fear is being nothing. Then you are but a hollow shell of a man, and are destined to live your life as such. Those who fear nothing, quite literally, are nothing, for it is all too human to experience fear. Leaping back on a sidewalk when a car speeds by too close to the curb out of fear that it will hit you. Slowly backing away from a dog out of fear that it will suddenly leap and bite you. The fear of giving a public speech because your audience might laugh at you or you might make a mistake in the reading. The fear of the possibility of being rejected after proposing marriage to the woman you love. Everything is fear. But the true kind of fear that everyone knows is the kind that you cry over when you wake up from the horrific nightmare, the kind where you scream for your mother as it drives you directly into a permanent catatonia. But phobias are definitely the worst, the ones that nobody dare to experience.

Spiders.

Snakes.

_Bats._

I use the concept of phobia and fear like no other, for I am the master of the art. I can make it as if a satanic apparition is leaping from your chest and tearing you to shreds, slowly driving you insane as your deepest, darkest nightmares become horrifying reality right before your eyes. I can drive a man to shoot himself by describing each and every piece of private Hell that resides within him. But, it was not always this way, of course. Once, I was but a simple professor at Gotham University, where I proved that the right concoction of chemicals could make a man literally fear nothing. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. It made my participant fear everything, even the sound of a ticking clock and a young girl chewing gum. Unfortunate results, really, as the student who participated went on a shooting rampage the next day in the middle of a freeway. Poor, unlucky child was slammed into by a runaway car and punted over the side, thirty feet down to the cold concrete below. Chances are, what he thought was concrete was instead a portal to the land of fire and brimstone, and as he fell he felt the cold, black, demonic hands of Satan pull him down into the abyss. Gordon was wrong to simply assume that it was temporary insanity that caused the boy to do what he did. He did it because I am the master of fear, and he was my plaything to be treated any way I see fit.

Of course, I am not a man without fear. I know mine could be seen as typical, but it so much more than that. Chiroptophobia, as I have been correctly diagnosed with. It is what I see when I close my eyes at night. It is what I usually wake to see, standing over my bed, giant like Langstrom was when he attempted to become one of them. But Langstrom was indeed a fool, who did not know how to wield his image the way _he _does. _He _strikes fear into every man, woman, and occasional child. _He _is what the common crook thinks of when he goes to mug a couple and their son in an alleyway. _He_ is what I fear more than anything else. But I am still the master of fear, and he will too be my… fears something, therefore everyone is a candidate for one of my experiments, which I do indeed perform to the fullest and will continue to do so for a very long time. Fear is my life. Fear is my blood.

Fear is indeed my power.


End file.
